This collection collects the first six issues of Crossgen’s faux-Victorian crime series Ruse. This comic is a fairly thinly disguised Sherlock Holmes style adventure series, and is none the worse for that. Instead of Holmes and Watson, we have Simon Archard as the brainy detective type, and the glamorous Emma Bishop as his sidekick, in a part radically different from the bumbling Dr Watson. She is more than she seems, and has some sort of mysterious magical powers that will no doubt be unfolding in future issues of the comic. Also, she actually seems to have a clue, which is more than anyone could say for poor old Watson. Not only that, but she is a lot easier on the eye that a middle-aged ex-army doctor would be (depending on taste, of course). The two of these take on various villains, solve the unsolvable, and much fun is had by all.

Although this collection is the first six issues, it is really composed of a few different individual stories. The introductory story is four issues long, and there are two single-issue stories. The first story-line introduces Archard and Bishop, and Partington, the city they inhabit, along with what will be a few regular supporting characters. Partington is very similar to late-Victorian New York, with a few differences, like the gargoyles that frequent the rooftops. The story opens with Archard solving a case by casting a brief eye over a pile of bits and pieces on a table. "Please, Mr Murchand, the bellows alone…" he says, pointing at the culprit, and they’re off on a rooftop chase in the rain, with the baddie holding a suitably screaming crinoline-clad hostage at knifepoint. This about sets the tone for the entirety of the collection, with mad dashings about interspersed with magnificent feats of detective work. Like I said, Sherlock Holmes stuff.

Over the course of the stories in this collection, we are introduced to an evil sorceress, Baroness Miranda Cross, and Lightbourne, a vengeful ex-partner of our main protagonist. These are likely to become regular villains in the ongoing series. We also have the detective going missing for a while, an army of lowlives acting as information gathering agents for Archard, and an extremely arrogant lead character. Did I mention Sherlock Holmes?

I have only one real complaint about this collection, and it is to the collection specifically that it applies. Most of the story pages actually run across both pages that face one another, that is, the story is read across the top of both pages, then down to the next row, and so on, instead of reading the left hand page first, then the right. This is easy enough to ascertain in the staple-bound comic versions of this title, but with the act of collecting them into a square-bound volume, the fact that the pages cannot be made to lie completely flat means that you often miss the fact that panels run across the middle of the join between the two pages. It also means that some of the art is lost to view. At least they haven’t done what Marvel did in the reprint of Marvelboy, where they managed to print the two pages of a double page splash back-to-back, rather than face-to-face…

Other than that complaint, I really enjoyed this. Mark Waid is a good, competent writer, with titles like Kingdom Come to his credit, and this is solid, entertaining fare. The artwork is more that easy on the eye, too. I’ll be picking up more volumes of it as it comes out, and I only wish that most of the rest of the Victoriana that gets published were anywhere near as good. (I make an exception for The Blessed Alan’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, obviously.) I liked Ruse, and I recommend it without reservation. It is not the best thing I read this year, but nowhere near the worst, but rather fits into a comfortable middle ground that most things inhabit, along with most of us.

Publisher: Crossgen Comics
Price: $15.95
More Info: Crossgen Web Site


Review originally on The Alien Online